WWII vets marvel at memorial in D.C., as crowds cheer for their heroes

Four guys were clustered around a park bench on the national mall on Saturday afternoon, taking a load off and shooting the breeze.

Suddenly, a short woman in a bright shirt came walking along the path. She turned to face them and said, "Thanks for our freedom," then walked away.

"That's something I never expected would happen today," said David Miskimen.

The 85-year-old Dover, Ohio, resident - like his three compatriots at the bench and more than 90 other northeast Ohioans in the nation's capital on Saturday - is a World War II veteran. He flew bombing missions from England as a B-17 pilot in the 8th Air Force.

Though the woman's gratitude surprised him, many similar scenes played out Saturday.

"How many of you had someone come up to you today and say, 'Thank you for your service,'" Earl Morse asked a bus full of the veterans later that day. Dozens of hands shot up.

Morse is the director and founder of Honor Flight, a Springfield-based program with a simple mission: to fly World War II veterans, at no charge to them, to the see the memorial built in their honor. On Saturday, 98 veterans made the trip.

Morse, a retired Air Force captain, started making the flights when he was a physician's assistant with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Springfield. He started asking the veterans if they would be going to see the World War II memorial after it was completed in 2004. Yes, most said.

But on return visits, most hadn't been there. Health and age often prevented solo trips, and many couldn't get friends or family to take them. So one day, Morse asked a vet if he wanted to go with him and his father, Erlis, also an Air Force veteran, in their small plane to see the monument for free.

"I was ready for him to say 'yes' or 'no' or 'I'll ask my wife,' but I wasn't ready for him to start crying," Morse said.

So on May 21, 2005, six small planes carrying 12 veterans made the first Honor Flight, a program that now sends regular commercial flights to Washington from Columbus, Cleveland and other cities and has spawned similar programs in North Carolina and Utah.

Saturday's journey began in the dark, with veterans arriving before dawn to get their tickets and T-shirts and pass through the lengthy screening process at the gate. As it turns out, even World War II veterans have to take their shoes off for airport security.

Their U.S. Airways charter flight featured a handpicked crew.

"They could be flying sports teams, they could be flying Fortune 500 companies, but usually when they hear it's an Honor Flight, it's the first flight they sign up for," Morse said.

Throughout the screening and boarding process, and as it would be for the rest of the day, the veterans were closely shadowed by dozens of Honor Flight Guardians, often family members or younger veterans who make sure the veterans want for as little as possible through the day-long trips. To make sure veterans can fly for free, guardians foot the bill for their own trips.

"They have paid cash money to have the honor and privilege of being here with you," Morse said.

When the Honor Flight plane touched down at Reagan National Airport in northern Virginia, it wheeled between geysers shot from two neon fire engines - a ritual of honor traditionally performed for military pilots making their last flight.

In the airport concourse, the welcome was a flurry of flags, balloons and clapping, with dozens of people cheering wildly as each veteran walked past.

"I never expected anything like this. It was really nice," said Alex Bellanca, 86, of Dover, an Army veteran who landed at Omaha Beach. "I'll never forget it."

From the airport, three buses wound their way through the streets of the capital and past the Washington Monument to deposit the veterans at their destination - the World War II Memorial. Akron veteran Frank Castellucio, 87, led them to it, carrying a flag that had draped the coffin of a World War II veteran who never made it to the monument. The honor of doing so was sprung on him at the last minute.

"I didn't know it at all; that was a surprise," said Castellucio, who was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge.

The veterans spent the next three hours wandering the monument, along with Honor Flight participants from other cities - about 850 veterans in total. At times they were treated to an explanation of the monument's features by Ray Kaskey, its chief sculptor, and a greeting from former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, who helped lead the charge for the memorial to be built.

Before lunch, Joe Nazionale of Dennison, Ohio, and Donald Caskey of Orrville, Ohio, were chatting at one of two flagpoles marking the entrance to the memorial.

"The funny times, the good times, they come real fast ... the bad times, they sort of fade on out the back," said Nazionale, who did tank maintenance and delivered dispatches on the back of motorcycles.

Suddenly, a man from California came up and asked for a picture with the two. The man, Peter Beuchler, was in town for business but couldn't pass up the opportunity to snap a photo with two World War II veterans.

"We just got lucky and got to meet some of the people the memorial was built for," Beuchler said after looking through an album handed to him by Caskey, who served in the Air Force.

The veterans were complimentary of the memorial built in their honor.

"It's a lot more than I expected really," said Miskimen, the B-17 pilot. "I had seen pictures, but a picture doesn't tell the whole story."

Harold Stoner, 86, of Navarre, a veteran of the Army Air Corps, said the monument is "not so much for us guys who are still living. It's nice to see it, but it's for those guys who didn't make it."

However, Morse, the Honor Flight founder, is very concerned about the guys who did make it, for a somber reason.

Actually, more like 1,200 somber reasons - that's the number of World War II vets who die every day by Honor Flight's estimate.

That gives him an increasingly shorter window of opportunity and a strong need for donations. The charter flight alone was about $35,000, and it fit only about a quarter of the veterans who applied to go.

"They all deserve to see their memorial. The sad thing is ... if there's not enough support in the community, we have no choice but to fly from somewhere else," Morse said.

That's why Bill Bevan, of New Philadelphia, Ohio, led the effort for the New Philadelphia Veterans of Foreign Wars to help support an Honor Flight from Akron-Canton airport. The post ended up donating $10,000.

Bevan was an Honor Flight Guardian on Saturday.

"I didn't do this to get a pat on the back," said Bevan, who joined the Navy in 1950 and later served in the Army. "All I care about is these guys and what they did for this country."

The veterans also toured the Vietnam, Korean War and Lincoln memorials, hopped a bus to the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in northern Virginia, then stopped off at another American mainstay: an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Then it was back to the airport, back on the plane and back to Akron.

As they filtered off the plane and went down the hallway toward the main concourse, a band struck up and dozens more cheering well-wishers clapped and waved flags, echoing the sentiment printed on the back of the Honor Flight guardians' T-shirts, a quote from Will Rogers that reads: "We can't all be heroes.

"Some of us get to stand on the curb and clap as they go by."

Noah Blundo writes for the New Philadelphia, Ohio, Times-Reporter.